Worms

Worms are invertebrate animals which do not possess a backbone and they can be described as elongated soft-bodied animals. Some animals that are definitely not worms are called worms. In our website we have two of these creatures. The glow-worm (which is a beetle) and the slow-worm (which is a legless lizard)

There are also a number of primitive, small elongated soft-bodied animals that are described or classified as worms, but are not true worms. These include roundworms (or threadworms) and flatworms (which include true flatworms, flukes or tape worms). Most of these are parasitic in nature and these worms are not included in our A-Z apart from the Free-living Flat Worm which is commonly seen in a freshwater environment and is not parasitic.

All our other worms are true worms which are all segmented worms. They are also called annelid worms (annelid meaning ‘ring’) because their segmented bodies look like they have rings all around them.

In the world, there are over seven thousand known different species of true worms. Most species live in the sea, many in fresh water and some on land. Worms play an enormous role in the natural scheme of things. Our earth would be a far different place without them.

In our website we have described 8 different types of true worms in the individual categories of land worms, freshwater worms and saltwater worms.